I need to look at my spare 3rd member to see what you are referring too. As I am still trying to understand how your stripped 2 axle shafts splines... :/

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If the side gear splines are worn it could cause the axle splines to strip easier.

So Essentially, His 3rd member needs replaced or rebuild then. I never seen axles splines stripped unless extremely heavily off road use. So I am kinda scratching my head on this one as it looking like the member is messed up and took out the j transfer case from not being repaired.

In the original post I went through they why. It was because the previous axle housing was bent due to some rough riding.

You bent your axle housing and didn't replace the axle shafts and 3rd member??? No wonder you trashed your transfer case. [ sorry I missed that and when using tap talk is limited ]

My guess is your damaged all of it when you bent the axle housing. And drove around without verifiying all the other components were good in the 3rd member.. Over stressed and damaged the 3rd member. With all the abuse it broke the transfer case.

The FSM shows you how to verify and check a 3rd member along with your transfer.

So you can replace the damaged components with known good parts or rebuild what you got.

Rough riding is an understatement. :/




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Ya, I did replace one shaft and once I was able to figure out the housing was bend a few weeks after that replaced that as well. Nothing was wrong with differential at the time. But bent housing actually warped the new shaft over those 2 weeks and I didn't realize it. My transfer case is totally fine btw. It was the differential. The boom I heard was the sleeve the axle shaft plugs into shearing in half. I'll try and take a picture of it. Might be hard to get it to come out. Guy at a 4runner/tacoma/tundra only salvage yard knew what it was within 30 seconds. Says hes seen it a few times. Crazy looking though.

I never heard of that.. Interesting indeed. I have heard of bent housing from extreme off roading and the the splines shearing form the off roading.

Great news on the good transfer as I was wondering how you managed to trash it. I was thinking that the diff binding may have put way too much stress on the transfer and possibly sheared something.

So it was a 3rd member binding as to why it would not come out of 4wd.

Your spider gears toast? As my spline spin in opposite directions when I turn them in the 3rd member i have out. Both with the same amount of pressure to turn.. In this particular member, its ring and pinon are warn and have slight play so it slightly nosier then normal. Maybe able to be repaired but was cheaper to get a used one then fixing.

Thanks for letting us know as this may help someone else. :-)